Artistic licence: an amateur photographer documents Krasnodar’s market vendors

Self-taught photographer Yuri Evzadze has spent the past 12 years taking photos of market vendors in the southern city of Krasnodar, Russia, primarily for use in official documents. He has never had any of his work published in magazines or exhibited in galleries. He is, according to fixer Ed Voronov, "a very secretive man". Without a mobile phone or access to the internet, the only information we have managed to glean is the following: he was born in 1951 and served in the army for most of his life before turning to photography, using only an inexpensive compact film camera. The result is a series of vibrant portraits of market sellers that, while compelling, bear many of the hallmarks of an amateur photographer, including date stamps and the occasional lens flare. "My friends works at a photo ateliers and noticed Yuri some time ago when he was printing pictures," says Voronov. "This series contains random stuff that was scanned from his rolls of film during one month. I know it's not a beautiful story."